I’m in Love with the Parisian Métro — Here’s Why

My admiration — possibly even love — for the Paris métro began in the winter of 1992. My girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife, was living and studying in the Sixth Arrondissement, and I often visited from London for long weekends. She tended to work on her doctorate on Sunday afternoons, so I’d be encouraged to vacate our cramped apartment. At first, I would ride the métro to some museum or gallery. Later, I rode the métro as an end in itself. 

I thought back to this time while I was researching the Grand Paris Express project for my book about the Paris métro. Set to fully open in 2030, the project is a behemoth expansion that will add four new lines (there are currently 14), 68 stations, and some 125 miles of track, almost doubling the size of the current network. Well-known architects like Kengo Kuma are involved, and the stations promise to be both sleek and impressive. 

But for me, nothing feels more Parisian than the old métro. So on a recent Sunday afternoon, I took one of my favorite rides to nowhere. I began at the Campo-Formio station, under the Boulevard de l’Hôpital in the 13th Arrondissement. Its entrance is one of the fewer than 90 surviving enclosures designed by Hector Guimard, the famed Art Nouveau architect. Most of these, including the one at Campo-Formio, are surmounted by a pair of Art Nouveau lamps. They remind me of giant plants — lily of the valley, perhaps, except that the “flowers” are red and, when illuminated at night, resemble dragon’s eyes.  

 I entered the station and followed signs saying direction bobigny on Line 5. Belowground, I paused to appreciate the uniform architecture of the old métro: a simple vault rising over two tracks and two platforms. I also stopped to look at the tiles lining the walls: the edges are beveled, so they sparkle under electric light. Aside from the station’s name, which is rendered on a blue and white sign, the tiled surfaces are all white. I recalled what a French historian once told me over lunch: “A métro station resembles a wine cellar of a château, which is a very nice thing to be reminded of.” 

I boarded an MF01 train — one of the more modern on the system, but still tall, slender, and touchingly streetcar-like, as métro trains always have been. As the train headed toward the Seine, it surfaced and steadily climbed, until it pierced one side of the great glass hall of Gare d’Austerlitz, one of Paris’s railway hubs. We then departed through the opposite side and crossed the river. To the left was Notre Dame Cathedral and, to the right, the skyscraping glass box that is the headquarters of the RATP, the local transit authority. Then we descended steeply, swerving with misplaced exuberance past the Paris morgue, where thousands of autopsies are performed every year, before delving back underground near Bastille. (I was reminded of the first time I made this river crossing: I immediately wanted to do it again to make sure it had really happened.) 

I got off at Bastille and transferred to Line 1 (direction La Défense). This is the glitziest in Paris, connecting many of the major tourist sites. Some stops have been expensively ornamented, as one of the métro 20 or so “cultural” stations. At Louvre-Rivoli, replica statues occupy platform alcoves; the light is reverentially low. Some Line 1 stations have flat roofs: they were built near the surface so they could sit above the water table of the adjacent Seine. Overhead, riveted girders — painted purple at Palais Royal–Musée du Louvre, red at Concorde — emphasize the straightness of the roofs. 

At Concorde, I changed to Line 12 (direction Mairie d’Issy). While most of the métro was built by the Paris Metropolitan Railway Co., which began operations in 1900, Line 12 (and part of Line 13) was built about a decade later by a rival company. The Nord-Sud Underground Electrical Railway Co. did not dispense with the white sparkle, but added colorful tiles around poster frames and along vaulted roofs. The accents are brown at ordinary through-stations, like Solferino, and green at junctions like Pasteur. While many stations have had their tiles replaced, the tiles at those two are original (dating from 1910 and 1906, respectively), betokened by their rich luster and fine cracks, like those seen in oil paintings.

At Pasteur, I changed to Line 6 (direction Charles de Gaulle–Étoile). As it left the station, the train broke the surface again, riding on silvery pillars and commanding excellent views into the third-floor apartments lining some dignified boulevards in the 15th Arrondissement. The climax of this parade was the river crossing on the Bir-Hakeim bridge, which is a double-decker: the métro shares it with a roadway. The Eiffel Tower was immediately in view on the right. (The Parisians were the ones not looking up from their phones.)

I alighted at the Passy station and looked back at the bridge. It was nightfall and the antique-looking lanterns were illuminated. And, all over Paris, the dragon’s eyes blazed red. 

Andrew Martin’s book, Metropolitain: An Ode to the Paris Metro, is available now.

A version of this story first appeared in the December 2023/January 2024 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline "Tunnel of Love."